A Solicitor General recently argues that the court should not pass comments about role of the police claiming such comments would demoralize them!
He expresses selective sympathy: only for a police officer on a hospital bed, none for any other injured citizens also on hospital beds, not to speak of many in graves and their grieving families. Representative voices of government in courts of law seek to insulate the police from being “demoralized” oblivious to videos exposing actions of the force shaming the uniforms they wear, and oblivious to the effect of those actions on all justice-denied citizens. Attempting greater ingratiation with the establishment, expressing sympathy only for the injured policeman, ignoring the countless innocent victims… surrendering in the process any claims to be different from diseased biased mindsets, one actor claiming to be displaced, left one wondering at displacement of the mental processes.
The SC had to ask authorities whether they have not seen the provocative speech videos (clips were apparently played) and it became necessary for the court to ask why the police took no action upon those incidents; had they responded with arrests, subsequent conflagration would never have taken place, lives and property saved. Why should the State not recover cost of deaths, private vehicles burnt and property damaged, from officers guilty of dereliction of duty and inaction, if not actually participating in stone pelting and violence, when charged with the duty of preventing precisely these events? Remember one government tried to recover damages from victimised citizens to cover up its own inability to check its storm troopers let loose?
There is another significant aspect meriting mention: for 80 days anti-CAA protestors were protesting on the streets literally all over the country and there was no violent incident (though they were fired at) whereas in two days of pro-CAA protests horrific violence disgraced the nation. That conclusively establishes who perpetrators of this violence are, and where its origins lie. The political outfits whose minions screamed goli maaro, who described protesters as ghaddaar, are squarely to blame.
Those political outfits, and the ideology which inspires these incidents, ought to be banned and its terror-and-hate infrastructure dismantled. It merits investigation whether inaction of the police is because it is hand-in-glove with those select sections of society which spew hate against minorities and seem eager to corner and butcher them in incidents intended and calibrated to strike terror in the hearts of others who “need to be taught a lesson” that they can be similarly victimized, or for other reasons rooted in the ruling party’s mindset. Such is not any police force, but storm troopers of a party, possibly cloaked in uniforms, not recruits into a force but infiltrators. They must be weeded out.
It has been seen repeatedly that there aren’t FIRs against perpetrators of violence and rape; instead, FIRs are registered against victims and their families: this shameful fact has time and again been seen; it is necessary to stem the rot and correct deviant aberrations that shame our nation (no one now screams “the nation wants to know”, because this truth this time too is as unpalatable as Gujarat-I, Nellie, Moradabad, Hashimpura, Jamshedpur, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi-I, Gujarat-II, Khandamal, Muzaffarnagar, Delhi-II…to name only the major ones) the following steps are imperative, and must immediately be taken.
Every uniformed officer must be called to account for his movements and those under his command from the time of the first provocative slogan right up to the time when the trouble subsided; telephone records of all these officers must be investigated; every telephone call received by these officers from every politician must be traced and exposed with timing and duration of each; police officers must be bound to explain what exactly was the conversation and why it took place at that time, if not automatic taping of all; a monitoring body must be put in place in every city where any communal trouble takes place; the monitoring body must immediately seize, confiscate or secure custody of every single piece of video and photographic evidence of every incident and have it analysed by impartial analysts to ascertain where the culpability lies and take immediate and drastic action; the Bill against communal violence which was stillborn must be enacted into law not as it was but with all the inputs that I have advocated (this will be made available to anyone who seeks it because I shall have sent it to publishers of this newspaper for dissemination to anyone who is interested in learning what amendments I proposed, and what the final shape of the Act should be).
The system suggested in those modifications to the Bill operates to disincentivize communal conduct by officials and politicians, and incentivises fair and secular action without which it is going to be impossible to bring about a change in the mindset of the police forces and the aggressive majoritarian politicians, or create trust among citizens. In some videos policemen are seen literally assaulting injured people lying on the road, even sneering at them in displays not just of lack of professionalism as the SC said but of a disgracefully unconcealed hostile mindset towards citizens whom they harbour hate for. There must also be in place a complete delinking between private military schools and military academies whether in Maharashtra or elsewhere, and infiltrators appearing for any military recruitment thoroughly screened for secular moorings to filter out communally biased moles before they are admitted or inducted into institutions, recognising that even these steps will require passage of many years before venom that has taken root is eradicated from the system completely.
The SC itself acting alone must appoint future judges in consultation with the senior-most legal luminaries of SC and HCs, with government never allowed to have any say in appointment of judges: witness governmental tendency to penalise judges who deliver decisions it perceives as “against” it, favouring judges who pass orders facilitating political agenda… an approach corroding judicial independence creating a damning toxic legacy that will enslave future generations in oppressive injustice. It is not do or die, and imperative for the SC to ground all anti-Constitutionalists, to declare, by its actions… Nayaa Munsifaana Nizam Dekho !
Shafeeq R. Mahajir is a seasoned lawyer based in Hyderabad.